The Milky Way is often drawn as a serene, flat spiral. The Milky Way was already known to bendOur Galaxy’s disc is not perfectly flat. Earlier Gaia work found signs that its most recent close passage may have affected stellar motion between roughly 300 million and 900 million years ago. We cannot step outside the Milky Way and photograph its profile. For now, Gaia has shown that the Milky Way is not merely rotating.